Teleconferencing with family helps reduce level of stress in children

Anecdotally, kids were happier when they used Family-Link, a videoconferencing system UC Davis Children's Hospital employs to connect hospitalized children with their families.

In studies, face-to-face family visits had already been shown to reduce stress and the amount of time kids take to recover, and researchers wanted to know whether virtual visits could do the same.

Upon admission and discharge, they studied 367 children who spent four or more days in the hospital - 232 who used Family-Link and 135 who didn't. Those who used Family-Link were less stressed when they left the hospital than those who didn't.

The study was published in the latest issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

- Greta Kaul

KIDS WITH AUTISM

Online clinical trial proves to be fast, efficient

In the first Web-based clinical trial for children with autism, researchers found that omega-3 fatty acids did not reduce subjects' hyperactivity - but the trial worked well, a conclusion that researchers hope will lead to more online trials.

Researchers said low cost, convenience for families, quick recruitment and feedback, and high rates of completion are benefits of the online study.

UCSF researchers enrolled 57 children from around the country through the Interactive Autism Network, a group that requires parents to prove their child has been diagnosed with autism to join in the first place. That online recruitment cut trips to the clinic, saving time and money.

As children were administered omega-3 or a placebo dose, parents and teachers submitted online surveys about their hyperactivity via e-mail. Results fed immediately into a database, giving researchers quick insight.

Researchers hope their success will encourage other researchers to use existing resources, like online communities and questionnaires, to make trials more efficient.

- Greta Kaul

HIV AND STROKE

Normal risk for some with virus

People who are infected with HIV have about a 40 percent increased risk of having a stroke compared with those who are uninfected, according to a 15-year study by Kaiser Permanente.

But there's good news: People who are HIV positive but have a robust immune system and no traceable virus in their blood don't have an increased risk, the same study found. The findings suggest that antiretroviral medications that keep the infection under control may protect people from stroke too.

The study looked at nearly 25,000 HIV-positive Kaiser members and more than 257,000 healthy control subjects in California. The study participants were followed from 1996 to 2011.

The HIV-positive patients had a higher overall risk of stroke. But HIV-positive patients who had high counts of CD4 immune cells or who had undetectable levels of virus in their blood had the same stroke risk as patients who were not infected.

The researchers also noted that toward the end of the study period, the rates of stroke between all HIV-positive patients and HIV-negative members converged - possibly due to use of early, aggressive antiretroviral therapy, which has become increasingly common in the past five years.

Results of the study were published June 17 in AIDS, the journal of the International AIDS Society.

- Erin Allday

HEART RHYTHM

Ablation reduces fibrillation risk

Treating atrial flutter - a type of abnormal heart rhythm - with a surgical technique called catheter ablation appears to reduce patients' chances of developing atrial fibrillation and lower their risk of needing future hospital care, according to a UCSF study.

Doctors have long known that atrial flutter can be treated with catheter ablation, a technique in which thin wires are threaded through blood vessels to burn or freeze tissue that's causing the abnormal heart rhythm. But whether the procedure had any other positive health effects was unclear.

The UCSF study looked at 33,000 patients with atrial flutter, about 2,700 of whom were treated with catheter ablation. Over a two-year period after treatment, patients who underwent ablation were 12 percent less likely to be hospitalized and 40 percent less likely to visit an emergency department, compared with those who received alternative therapies including drugs.

The ablation patients also had about an 11 percent reduced risk of atrial fibrillation, another type of abnormal heart rhythm.

The results suggest that catheter ablation should be considered a first-line treatment for atrial flutter, the UCSF researchers said.

Their work was published July 1 in the journal PLOS ONE.

- Erin Allday

CANCER RESEARCH

Cells with thick sugar coating raise metastasis risk

The sugary coating that surrounds all cells tends to become thicker and bulkier in cancerous cells, which can lead to increased activity of certain proteins that in turn may cause tumor growth and metastasis, according to research out of UCSF.

The scientists studied tumor cells taken from cancer patients. In patients with metastatic cancer, the cells were genetically predisposed to have a bulky glycocalyx, or sugary coat. To determine what effect that bulkiness might have, the scientists built a computer model to test possible consequences.

The model suggested that a thick glycocalyx may draw and over-activate proteins called integrins that help build connections between cells and the molecular scaffolding that supports tissues. That over-activation could explain, in part, how cancerous cells grow so wildly.

The scientists then backed up their computer model by covering noncancerous cells with a synthetic glycocalyx that was designed to be bulky. Further study found that integrins did indeed gather to the synthetic glycocalyx, as the model had predicted.

In addition to UCSF, the research was done at Cornell University, UC Berkeley, the University of Bordeaux in France, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Florida State University and the University of Pennsylvania.